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I disagree that the Simple, Good, and Tasty article misses the point about safety. Quite simply and without fanfare, the article states that the issue of safety is one in the same as the trust that is placed in the farmer providing the milk. I’d rather drink raw milk from a farmer I know and trust than eat a commercially produced chicken sold at the supermarket.

I think it’s more complicated than “this farmer is a good guy, and therefore his raw milk will be safe,” and I say that as a person who a) thinks that knowing your farmer is an incredibly key thing for food safety and quality and b) wants to love and consume raw milk. But there’s a tendency to romanticize the stuff without wrestling with the fact that pasteurization really was a huge step forward for food safety, and that if hundreds of people get sick a year with today’s tiny amount of raw milk consumption, it will only get far worse if it’s expanded exponentially. Commercially farmed chicken’s got nothing to do with it.

I haven’t looked deeply into the issue, but I was also struck by SG&T’s apparent ignoring of raw milk safety (which, especially if you’re not already converted, is a major concern). In the article, the author states “…we know the milk is safe. We trust the small farm where it comes from and know that their cows are happy, healthy, well-cared for and grass-fed.” I’m not sure how the second sentence supports the first: how do happy cows lead to bacterial safety? Kris seems to make the same point: the milk is good because I trust the farmer. But I wonder what the basis of trust in the farmer is, and whether whatever is being trusted in actually results in food safety. I imagine the raw milk consumers in Washington in the article linked to from the article linked to in this post trusted their farmer.